The Bad Man eBook

The face of Lopez was a study; but they were so excited
that they did not look at him. Angela rushed
to her father and clasped his arm when she heard his
last raise. “That’s right, father.
Don’t let him get it!”

“Don’t worry,” he reassured her,
and patted her little hand, so warm on his arm.
He turned to Pell. “You city fellers needn’t
think you can come down here and put it all over us.”

“Nevertheless,” said Morgan Pell, “I’ll
just bid a hundred and seventy-five thousand.”

“Then I’ll make it a hundred and eighty!”
his antagonist stated.

Quick as a flash, “A hundred and ninety,”
Pell said.

“Two hundred, by darn!” yelled Hardy,
furious now.

“Two hundred and—­” Pell began;
when Lopez, to their amazement, rapped on the table
with his gun, as though he were an auctioneer and this
his gavel, “Senors!” he shouted.
“It is enough!”

Everyone was dumbfounded, “Enough?” Hardy
inquired, unbelieving.

“Too much!” Lopez explained.

“What’s the idea?” Pell, shrewder
than before, wanted to know. His brow contracted.
So there was a fly in the ointment, after all!

“Ze idea, my friend, is zis,” Lopez calmly
stated. “I am not interest in pieces of
paper. I do not accep’ checks. Also
I am no damn fool! You sink I sink you bring
back two ’ondred sousand dollar? Two ’ondred
sousand soldier, mebbe! But two ’ondred
sousand dollar! Pah!” and he made a gesture
of disgust, and crushed the paper in his hand and let
it fall on the floor under the table.

“Then what’s the idea of this auction
in the first place?” Pell asked, mad through
and through that they had been tricked by this Mexican
fool.

Lopez leaned back on the table. “To find
out if you gentlemen was rich enough to make it worth
my w’ile to take you wiz me and ’old you
for ransom.” His eyes half closed.
He was enjoying their discomfiture. There was
nothing he liked more than to spring a surprise like
this.

Pell and Hardy looked at each other, real terror in
their faces now.

“Ransom!” the former cried.

“It is quite to be seen zat you are,”
the bandit grinned. “Zis, if I may speak
so, ’as been a lucky day for me!”

Pell turned to both Hardy and Lopez, and addressed
them: “Bluffing, were you?”

Lopez was quick to retort: “And was you
bluffing when you bidded ze two ’ondred sousand
dollars?”

Hardy was agitated. “I’m afraid we
were a bit hasty,” he tried to explain things
away.

This tickled Uncle Henry’s bump of humor.
He chuckled, and cried, “Ho, ho! Serves
you both gol darn good and right!” He seemed
to go into a spasm of laughter.

Pell’s chief concern now was to get out of the
mess—­to get away; to have everything settled.
Lopez could probably be dealt with, man to man.

“Look here,” he suggested, in a direct
attack, “can’t we settle things some way?”